In this post I was mainly testing out the Ncloth at varies stages of the project.

The clothing didn’t follow the body at all.
Feedback: Try nCache to check simulation each time to check the simulations.

These was some of the other tests for the girls’ clothing. The 2 pieces of clothing keep colliding and won’t fall down when she turned upside down.

Feedback: you need to place a gravity constraint for the dress to go down. Try making the poly count higher, the dress will eventually go down if you leave it there long enough. There’s a lot of space from the dress and legs so it will take its time. Best to just have one clothing layer. The 2 layers is not worth the hassle you can have the same effect with blend shapes.

In conclusion: at this stage going to just leave the Ncloth experiments till the girl is fully rigged, if I was to have 2 layers for the skirt layer to be blend shaped while the bottom layer to be Ncloth.

In this was mainly testing out the Ncloth not the rig hence why most of the controllers are missing.

Ncloth test. Tried to have a connected section for the coat, it moved around too much. There was issues trying to have the button follow the clothing. Made more tests once I created a basic rig for the character. Ryan had skin weighted it. There’s twisting of the foot. The clothing didn’t follow the body when set the playback at 24 frames but it played when I set it to “play every frame”. Ended up just nCache it to play at normal s peed to see what it looked like. At first the nails stabbed through the coat, then the arm went right through the sleeve in the end. Managed to have the leg stop going right through the clothing. For now going to put on more controller’s and blend shapes before playing around with the Ncloth again.

Feedback: Try parenting the button to the cluster.

There seems to be a few issues for the button. For now the masked man will have no buttons. Going to need to play around with the fabric properties and control what areas has the most influence.

The clothing kept exposing the breasts, at some stages the sleeve kept coming off the arm. At 1:09 not sure why it causes the cloth on the neck to move like that. At least later on the clothing interacts with the leg without the leg going through it.

In conclusion: Going to have to look up how to have part of the mesh to stay still, possibly enlarging some sections of the clothing so the body won’t clip with it.

Started off by blend shaping the curtain to go flat. There was distortion so decided to have 2 different curtain shapes. Blend shaped the red curtain so it will go into the shape of the purple curtain as well as can blend shape some of the subtle wind movements. Test 4 is the test render of the test animation. In the actual animation going to have to edit the renders to be a brighter colour. Noticed the purple curtains looking stiff so decided to give it a simple rig to have more control compared to the red curtain. Need to paint the skin weight on the top so it won’t be influenced as much from the other joints.

Test 9 is the subtle curtain movement I was going for to happen in the background,… if it was playfully possessed.

Deleted the top half of the second layer of the dress. This will go on top of the main dress, rigged it. Deleted the sleeve off the girl since it was skin tight anyway and main the sleeves from the writs a separate mesh with both a rig and blend shapes. Since it’s a rig it has more control and less likely to go wrong compared to the Ncloth.

Tested out the rig for the Girl as a woman’s character. For this one unlike the other characters. The body and the dress is the same mesh. Since for the actual girls top layer skirt I rigged, constrained and placed Ik handels the same way, thought that would work for even with the longer dress. It didn’t, it really didn’t.

Not sure why one of the controllers keep spinning. Safe to say the Ik handles aren’t doing the rig any favours. The first 6 seconds is all you need to see to see the problem with the dress. Rig. On the plus side the floor controller works.

In conclusion: going to remove the Ik handles, the controllers at the bottom and load the main controllers from the hip with orient constraints every so often.

Placed some Highlight on the mothers breasts to make it look more appealing.

Record of making video of Snabirtle.

Had tried to make the shell for the turtle snake. It looked off putting, the actual snake looks off putting. For now going to move on to the bird that the masked man gets out the cupboard for the girl.

Looked at reference pictures of birds. The shape didn’t make the character look cute and young at all.

Decided to make the head look bigger. Made little hat shape as a turtle shell, left out the bottom of a shell that normally comes from a shell as well as a little tail. To see what it looks like. Looks like some rat creature. Made the eye socket on the large size since from research creatures with bigger heads and eye ratio the head contribute to its cute factor. Hopefully making it more appealing to the audience. Young creatures tend to have a bigger head ratio, people tend to more drawn to baby animals then adult ones.

Decided to remove its peak to see what it looked like, reminds me too much of the garlic fish mouth from last year so decided to put the beak back on.

Made the tail chunkier with a little diamond shape for the tail to make it resemble somewhat of a snake. Decided to call it “Snarbirtle” part snake, part bird, part turtle. From that point decided why waste time modelling the “snake bird” the snake looks hideous and its better to work on this creature then waste more time on multiple characters. Planning to replace the “snake bird” with Snabirtle and have the scene where the masked man gets the bird toy out the cupboard, to be a differently textured snabirtle.

Decided to make the guy pink since from research, some albino snakes have a pink hue, snakes at a lighter hue made it look less threating. The third bird at the right corner is a Maya hardware 2.0 render. Since it’s a faster render then Arnold, this Maya hardware 2.0 will be a good backup plan.

Feedback: the shell looks like a war hat not a turtle shell.

A couple of people have said a variant of the same thing in different occasions.

In conclusion: for now going to leave it for now. If I have time I will go back and put a pattern on the shell to make it more recognisable as a turtle shell and not just a hat someone plopped on its back.

A second year in the games technology course had agreed to UV my items so I could focus on other items.

My partner UVed:
Judge mallet
zen garden
Popcorn plant

Questioned why he had separate items that need difference textures Uved in the same square and why the seam is straight In the middle on the visible side on everything. For example, for the zen garden asked if he could Re UV long ways so the bottom is covered by the soil anyway. And for the baby rattle for the seam to be the same direction of the rattle.

His response: are you seriously questioning me, my UV skills are lot better than yours. How else am I supposed to UV, The way you want it is the wrong way. (image 2) my way is the left, the way you want it on the bottom is the right, Look at that distortion.

Drew a diagram, Pointed out his way is the left, what I was trying to get to was the example on the right, he placed the seam too low and might as well do the one on the right since the sand will cover the seam. After the diagram, he redid them to match the example on the right black circle.

Checked through the UVS, he Has bad space management. There’s large empty spaces for items above is an example of the amount of space he had left.

I Had to separate several items, so they work as an item on its own (for example the ball and the handle of the baby rattle, the judge mallet and clog of wood as separate items) as well as scale everything to better fit the grid.

In conclusion: I had tried collaborating with someone, it took more time to covey the task. There seemed to be communication issues where it took time to communicate the same message in different ways. Communication skills need to be improved, through checks need to be done if hand off a role to someone else.

(Re- uved version, there’s stretching in some areas however it flowed more as one item)

In conclusion: going to check all the items he had Uved again or just Re uv it all myself.

Upon inspection, not only he had poor space management, on all items the seams he has placed are all in questionable places, realized he hasn’t even unfolded or optimized any of the uvs. Going to have to re UV all the items he has touched.

Upon questioning him why he UVed the way he did. Questioned why for the banana why the seam was straight down the visible side is and why the seam is not on the clear edge instead.

Ryan’s response: you ungrateful bitch, there’s nothing wrong with my UVS. You don’t need to unfold or optimise them. The way you’ve done them are wrong, there’s stretching. Look at my versions, there’s no stretching. A banana has no edge.

In conclusion:there’s no point collaborating with someone that either doesn’t understand that the placement of the seams is extremely poor and can’t even do a simple mallet or banana, Or purposely did a poor job of it. Wasting half an hour explaining a banana has edges ( Later found out he did not purposely do a poor job of it since he had shown me his own models he Uved the exact same way. )
-Disliked his seam placements.
-Handing over a task to someone else doesn’t shorten the production time.
Decided to just Uv the rest and Re- uv the ones he had touched.

29/ 11 / 2017
Tried working the Hand again.
Feedback: you need to model from a real hand not a skeleton

At first looked at an apple bottom and would imagine it’s just a stick through it. After looking at reference images of toffee apples realized its flat due to the apple being rested like that with the caramel dripping down.

Base modeled a toffee apple, most of the design will be in the texture hence the simplicity of the model. As well as it will only be shown a few seconds from a distance In the animation. Decided to model toffee apples as trees because thought why have real trees when the mother already going to have hair as a shape of a cat, as well as to further link the theme of the circus, Since toffee apples are widely associated as circus food.

Modelling a popcorn plant is relevant to the project because popcorn is widely associated as circus food.

After realizing my blunder of the original submitted shot list and schedule. Decided to redo them.

Ideally there would be no Tv paint section, decided to include that section as a backup if more experiments with the smoke simulations in Maya or after effects fail. Some of the things that’s had been placed in the after effects sections like the sky can easily be done in Maya as a rotating sky globe or placed in premier. If its placed in premiere it would be faster to swap out the background for something else.

If the experiments with smoke and water are successful in Maya or after effects that would just leave one issue. The scene where the girl turns into dust that half way through turns into a bird then back to dust. Experiments need to be done either in Maya or after effects to avoid the need for a drawn frame by frame animated section in TV paint.

In conclusion: more experiments need to be done to be able to avoid the need for Tv paint.

After running the animatic through had realized made a giant mistake of misspelling the word balloon in the title. Spelling it with “Ballon” This can not happen in the actual animation.

Had realized for my submission, the thing I had submitted was not a shot list but just an excel list keeping track of how long each shot is, the camera row to be filled yes or no if the camera has been animated each section. Also had just realized several spelling errors after running it through the program “grammerly”.

In conclusion: if I were to create an actual shot list I would need to write a description of what’s happening in each shot, camera movement, and camera angle. From the animatic, from the shot where the girl as a woman commits suicide off the cliff and the masked man hugging the girl, seems like its missing a scene.

30/ November / 2017

Animatic feedback:
Keep the masked man on the left, since his on the left most of the time anyway.
Home is the left and away on the right.
To have a scene of the masked man more of a father figure and seen in the family unit, for example In the circus scene the masked man can sit where the” other” is sitting.
On the outside of the circus for the boobs to go behind the belly, since the esophagus doesn’t work well as an opening.

At first had the idea that the masked man is wearing a wedding ring, gives the child a gift, kisses the wife and leaves, however it was suggested it would work better the masked man and the mother is already separated.

5/Dec /2017Showed animatic to a group of people.
-They questioned who the person in heels is.
-To have the track in of the circus tent before everything that’s happened in the tent.
-To show a pattern of the box opening of her looking happy then sad then happy briefly. To show that’s not what she wants. (the shot where the masked man is opening box up but dead) that people can’t see his hand all the way there and people are looking at the girls face. The girl could look shocked at him dead.
-(The shot where the girl’s eye close up inside circus) doesn’t make sense because the “other” looks like his 10 ft. away.
-(game room) you could have the egg hatching before the close up of the masked man’s face and establishing shot.
-Are the balloons going to stay red?
-(For the girl disappearing scene and halve way through turns into a bird) you can have a replacement animation where you have a rough model of the bird, the scene is going to be so quick people won’t notice it’s not physically morphing.

How many characters do you have for your animation?
After they asked that question realized there’s 9 “characters “if including the masked man as a boy to be modelled rigged and textured. 8 without the masked man as a boy. The models required: Masked man, girl, girl as women, mother, other, snake turtle baby, snake turtle adult, black hands.

After blocking out the dress for the girl character, decided to try out Ncloth again. The collider body kept disappearing, so tried to delete all the history. The software crashed. Opened up an old save before the Ncloth experiment, still had same issue. So, re import the items in a new scene. Same issue, made sure the body wasn’t keyed to disappear. Tried again to delete history, the program didn’t crash again but the body still disappeared.

Feedback: Try importing it into 3dsmax then re import it again.

Tried the suggestion, it worked

Disclaimer: Music audio swiped from the youtube library

Upon reopening the file when trying to move the dress, it would turn into different things. Thought this was interesting and would like to recreate this in the actual animation but not when I’m trying to model something.

In conclusion: going to have to find out what is the cause of this happening, to prevent it happening in the modelling stage however possibly implement it in the animation phase.

Decided to experiment with the shapes. Screenshot-ted the video footage of the glitches happening and overlapped them, as idea generation of what can be incorporated into the animation.

As a second attempt, added overlapping pinks, blues and green squares In the background.

After creating these experiments, just realized I don’t need to incorporate any of this, since people thought the animation is already confusing as it is. This may or may not be part of a side project separate from the main thesis film. In the process of trying to make the animation less confusing not add more layers that would make the meaning of the animation even less clear.

Modeled the “Other character”Feedback: remember to define the joints so you can deform probably.

For the ending of the animation to work, gave the masked man some questionable heels where the idea is you only see the close up of it in the dream sequence and at the end of the animation. To make people question is this a man in heels or a woman with man clothes. Linking from feedback from the pitch for the masked man can be the bystander and “Everyone”.

Feedback: what are you doing to the poor Masked man? you should define the shoes so it doesn’t look like it’s part of him.

Did a little snake bit, can only see it close up and unintentionally made an L symbol. In conclusion: going back to the spiked heel as well as sort out that crease.

Base modeled the toy car. It looked too: plain, boring and modern, so looked at reference images of Victorian cars and toys.

Added a little detail because thought what’s the point of animating or displaying a basic toy car, it still looks basic. Above the wheels tried to make it snake exec giving the node to the snake turtleIn conclusion: after the storyboard phase, depending on how much screen time or interaction the character has with the toy car would determine if it has more detail or not. For now, going to base model all the characters and environments for now.

Based modeled the mother.

Tried to model the breasts of the mother. It looked like a tumor. The right image is the 3rd attempt at modelling the breasts. Need to sort that crease out.

In this post are couple of designs for the mother’s hair as well as initial 3D record of making of her face.

Initial hair doodles of the shape of the hair for the mother. All of them look to over the top and need to scale it back, otherwise people would think she’s the main character.

1/ November/ 2017
Design sketches for the mothers “face” and hair.

After showing someone the top 4 sketches on the left and the 1st bottom one on the left, they mentioned they preferred the diagonal fringe. The bottom hairstyle looked a bit empty so tried raising the triangle one down to see if it looked better. Still looked off so combined the back of the hair with the triangle that has a cat at the back and the fringe that is going diagonally. The only issue with this is that it has 2 different partings. At the back of the hair tried to make it look like a cat with the back of its head showing, but pretending to be a bird with a white spot on its back and a gold chain on its ear with a black pendant dangling.
The gold to symbolize she likes a fool’s gold trying to lure people into her trap, the bird looking front paired with the gold chain to show she’s only with people or use people for their money like how she uses her daughter as a tool to make more profits.
Decided to colour the dangling pendant black, to symbolize: fear, doom, and authority she has on the girl.

The chin looks on the pointy side, while modelling going to need to wound it off a bit.

Tried modelling the mouth, it came out hideous. Going to move on to the actual hair.

Did a draft texture to see how much it stretches Modeled the cat as a place holder to see where I would need to model the planes of hair to.

7/ 11/ 2017
Version 8 Feedback: you need to work on your topology of the lips, have the hair more away from the face so it can cast a shadow. The cat looks more like a bird, and very pinched. You may want to expand that bit and add an extra edge loop.

Decided to redo the lips, but this time model it closed to make it easier to figure out the shape of it. Maybe it’s the creases, it still looks off putting.Feedback: it looks a lot better from the first version but you still need to work at it.

The lines for the hair appeared thicker than I thought, in the finial texture going to make it smaller. Even from a distance, the lips are off putting. If after a couple more attempts at modelling the lips fail, 2D lips on top of the 3d model it is. Then again, the girl character has lips, if mothers lips fail going to need to design different type of lips for the girl character.